


To be English

by Phantom_Ice



Series: To Be... Hetalia Character Fills [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: ...kind of, Bars and Pubs, Character Study, Drunk England (Hetalia), Drunkenness, England connecting with his people, Friendship, Gen, Reveal, brief mention of alcoholism in a joking way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_Ice/pseuds/Phantom_Ice
Summary: 01. Favorite CharacterEngland enjoys a brief moment in a pub venting to his always understanding citizens.





	To be English

**Author's Note:**

> So I found a few Hetalia one-shot prompt fills hanging around my drive, and figured I'd post them. Enjoy.

England had once ruled the seven seas. He was a feared captain, a chilling specter to his enemies and an even more insubstantial ghost to the ‘law’. Of course, the so-called ‘law’ out to get him was Spanish, not English. He was a privateer after all (not a pirate, no matter what some might say). 

For a good time, he would say he was one of the most fearsome men on the planet (screw what France said, England knew the frog was scared those times. He also knew for much of that career his own voice would crack every once in a while. No need for the reminder). 

In his even more distant youth England had been quite the opposite. A small trembling boy without much direction, just trying to live day to day and stay out of the way of the brunet giant who stomped through his lands like they were his own and stole England’s first name to replace with his own creation. Roman London, he had been. An entity, yes, but one with implicit ownership attached (he tried not to think these days of 'British America' and the habits of Rome he had never been able to shake). It was a time when the second generation of nations was rising as the first reached its peak. In the present, he would often reflect that none of the ancient nations made it past the human age of thirty. He was already twenty-six (though nations aged proportionally, not linearly, so for all he knew that could mean he had four years left or four hundred. Maybe the not knowing was worse). 

As the solitary, feared, adolescent empire, he had always been filled with adventure and bravado and overflowing bravery. 

As the part-of-a-matched-set, whimpering, toddler territory, he had always been filled with homeliness and insecurity and overwhelming fear. 

What younger nations and those he had only really started to deal with on equal standing in the modern age would find surprising is that, historically, he had tended to wear his heart on his sleeve. He had been that privateer as genuinely as he had been that survivor.

As genuinely as he was this mostly collected man with a penchant for sweater vests and a love of gardening and needlework. And, to be perfectly honest, he knew he still wore his heart on his sleeve. He tried to hide it, he hated to leave it exposed, but he knew it was there because, as much as he chided America for it, England knew he himself was piss-poor at guarding and restraining and masking his emotions. 

He didn’t mean to make things more difficult for his Prime Minister when he lost even his attempted reserve to alcohol and remunerated the many failings of government to a group of fellow bar tenants, but he wasn’t going to hide all his dissatisfaction either. He had had more than enough revolutions and civil wars to know that grievances needed to be aired. 

“Then… then, ‘e tells me that he’d just start his ‘wn bloody religion ‘cuz he was the king and wasn’t like anybody could stop him.” Not that those grievances were always up to date, “And I just nodded, ‘cuz he was my boss, you know ‘ow it is.” A couple of patrons nodded in shared empathy, “thinkin’ it’d blow… blow over by the next day, but the man’s bloody serious! Now centuries later and I still have to ‘ear from the others that I wouldn’t know religion if it bit me in the arse just ‘cuz one o’ my ridiculous bosses built a ‘church of me’ thinking it would be a bright idea! So Catholicism or Protestantism, am I both? Nether? What’d you think?”

He got mixed answers as patrons threw in their own religions. The best suggestion by far was alcoholism. England pointed at the man. 

“Bright lad, there,”

He lifted his glass and took a few more solid chugs. What time was it? He didn’t know. The pub was not too loud anymore, had been louder earlier, he thought. The lights were a bit dimmer too, had half been turned off? No, they had just flickered, so some had burnt out, not been turned off. Through the glass door and large glass window, the street was crossed by the occasional cab. The street lights were still. Someone breathed in England’s hair and he lifted his head from where it had fallen onto the countertop. 

“Hmmm?”

“So should I just put the tab to Mrs. May?” The barkeep only half sarcastically asked. 

England grunted, paused in thought, then shrugged. 

“Be back tomorrow, pay it then,” he promised, making sure to make eye contact. The barkeep smiled a bit fondly beside himself. He obviously wouldn’t accept it as payment from most others, but, well, he was England. It was a strange fact that the blond man had almost easily convinced everyone in the pub who spoke to him after his second drink of. 

It should have been monumental, but it wasn’t, because, well, of course he was. 

“Bosses be crazy,” someone else mumbled to England’s left, far too late to contribute to the conversation. England smiled. 

“Don’t listen to what the other nations say, you lot are all alright,” he offered up in reply. 

The people cheered. 

England finished his drink. 

Not many people realized he wore his heart on his sleeve. Sometimes it was lonely. 

It was a good thing he had 53 million friends when it really counted. 

They had mostly never been pira--privateers nor hidden from men with axes, but they knew what it was like to be him regardless. They knew who he was as much as he knew who they were. 

One of those friends drags/stumbles-with him to England’s home, drops him off gently and then pinches his wallet (and it makes him smile, it’s just what he would have done, after all, and he knows he’ll find it pilfered but otherwise right as rain pushed through his mailslot tomorrow). 

Intimate without saying a word. Just as England likes it.


End file.
